


Ghostbusters

by novaauster



Series: Atla Modern AU drabbles [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28562064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novaauster/pseuds/novaauster
Summary: In Teo's house there are three ghosts: Janice the 60's weed lesbian, Bartholomew the Victorian coke child, and Wolfgang the malicious Frenchman, or maybe Scotsman, we're not quite sure. Teo gives Sokka a house tour. Rated for some cursing and threats from the ghosts but generally very lighthearted.
Relationships: Sokka & Teo (Avatar)
Series: Atla Modern AU drabbles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092587
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Ghostbusters

Teo checks whether the rumbling noise wafting towards him is a malfunctioning machine. Thank John Mellarkey, it isn’t. Instead, it is the possibly equally-destructive sound of Sokka’s car quickly approaching. There is a car alarm and the distinctive sound of that one squirrel family in the unkempt bushes cussing Sokka out. In Squirrel, hopefully, unless Teo’s dad has been doing some extra-unethical experiments. For funsies.

Teo maneuvers around the dusty, towering stacks of National Geographic magazines in the front hallway and catches the edge of his wheelchair on the corner of the carpet that never sits flat. Then, he starts thinking of plans to build a machine that forcibly flattens carpets. And maybe waterboards them, for his effort. 

The doorbell rings. Today, the sound is a remix of the piña colada song. Sokka must find that hilarious. Teo quickly flattens the rest of the rust-colored carpet and rolls to the front door. _Why the fuck is there a screen door and a normal door, this is the north and we don’t go outside _, Teo wonders before unlocking the door.__

__“I like your doorbell.” Sokka is standing just a hair too close to the half-painted door to be normal. He was probably investigating the lock._ _

__“I like your outfit,” Teo replies._ _

__Sokka is wearing a neon-yellow lab coat, crocs, and a The Wiggles tank top, and he has the nerve to ask “Really?”_ _

__“No, it’s hideous. Want some chips?”_ _

__Sokka considers this. “Only if they’re hot.”_ _

__“Just because Zuko consumes cancer-inducing amounts of Takis doesn’t mean you have to match him. Opposites attract, remember?” Teo says before wheeling (backwards, he might add) into the cramped kitchen and digging through the pantry for the chips he keeps there just for Sokka. They’re barbecue-flavored, but Teo put them in ziploc bags labeled _flaming hot _in teal Sharpie to appease Sokka’s 'masculine pride' or something.___ _

____Teo tosses a bag of the chips to Sokka, who snatches it out of the air like a desperate football player, tears at the bottom of it- “You’re allowed to just open it where it’s sealed,” Teo reminds, feeling a bit like Sokka’s mother, not that he’d know what that felt like._ _ _ _

____“Never,” Sokka says gleefully, and deigns to pop the bag between his hands instead. It pops like a gunshot and Sokka and Teo both wince._ _ _ _

____“Was that really necessary," Teo drawls, telling and not asking._ _ _ _

____“It was funny, though,” Sokka says, rubbing his ears._ _ _ _

____Teo stares at the ceiling. It was once egg-yolk yellow, his mom’s choice in paint, but is now splattered with the ashy remains of his dad’s doomed pancake-flipper. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that Sokka coming over is a special occasion. “It was, in fact, funny.”_ _ _ _

____Sokka is stuffing his face with the chips, and are his eyes actually reddening? He pauses to sniff. “I can handle the spice,” he assures Teo._ _ _ _

____Teo simultaneously hopes that the placebo effect of the spice is working and that his second-in-command at robotics is not inobservant enough to be fooled by a teal sharpie label. They were barbecue chips, for god’s sake. He fights the urge to facepalm. “So, anyways, you want to meet the ghosts.”_ _ _ _

____“Do I want to meet the ghosts?”_ _ _ _

____Teo silently points out the “ghostbuster” pin on Sokka’s lab coat._ _ _ _

____The fridge, a Frankenstein-like thing with brightly-colored magnets arranged into chemical equations on it, swings open with a creak. Out floats a half of a bacon sandwich. Worryingly, the sandwich disappears, bite by invisible bite._ _ _ _

____Sokka squeals, drops his remaining chips, and gets treed by box-jumping straight onto the counter, knocking a stray beaker over. Teo is glad that the beaker only contained vinegar, as opposed to the one on top of the fridge full to the brim with hydrochloric acid. Shaking, less white than a ghost, and smelling of vinegar, Sokka squeaks. “What the fuck was that?”_ _ _ _

____Teo offers Sokka a hand towel with which to wipe the vinegar off of his crocs or cry into. “Janice got the munchies.”_ _ _ _

____“I,” Sokka gasps, “thought you were exaggerating.”_ _ _ _

____“I was not. Janice the 60’s weed lesbian needs her bacon sandwiches.”_ _ _ _

____A plastic-against-metal shushing makes Sokka spin right around on the counter, hugging his knees, to face the fridge. Teo wheels over to one of the junk drawers and retrieves a gallon bag of fridge magnets, then dumps them all, clattering, on the fridge. Only some of them stick._ _ _ _

____The ones that stick, right under the formula for photosynthesis, say we’re out of mustard._ _ _ _

____“Holy shit,” Sokka says, and continues saying. “Holy John Marinara.” He paws at his lab coat pockets for his phone._ _ _ _

____Teo rolls his eyes. “Do you honestly not expect me to have full surveillance in my own house?”_ _ _ _

____“Do it,” Sokka murmurs, “for the vine.”_ _ _ _

____“Sure, dude.” Teo isn’t one to keep his friend from his dreams. Dreams of becoming a star on an app that doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe he means Tiktok. The expression doesn’t quite ring the same way. “You want to meet Bartholemew the cocaine Victorian child?”_ _ _ _

____“I…” The tears in Sokka’s eyes are either from the placebo-spicy chips or the shock, and he doesn’t know which is worse. “Guess so?”_ _ _ _

____“Great. I’d help you down, but.” Teo gestures towards his wheelchair. “So good luck.”_ _ _ _

____Sokka lets go of his knees and gingerly slides off of the counter._ _ _ _

____“See, that wasn’t so hard.”_ _ _ _

____“It would be harder for you,” Sokka replies, before his brain catches up to his mouth. “Uh…”_ _ _ _

____Teo just cackles. “It would. Follow me.” He leaves the fridge magnets piled on the floor, hoping that Janice will get bored enough to clean them up. His room is right next to the kitchen, which is useful if he has any experiment ideas at midnight. Or just wants a snack. Sometimes it's the same thing._ _ _ _

____Teo’s bedroom door is really a sort of collage. On the lower corner, the wood is scraped away from when he ran full-tilt into it as a toddler and his dad pretended to have invented bandages just for him, to love him to the point of invention, and his mom had tried not to laugh because it was socially unacceptable to smile when a toddler was bleeding, but Teo was laughing too. On the top section, the paint is peeled away from the piece of tape he used to fasten his first first-place robotics ribbon to the door. On the bottom section, there are eraser marks in the shape of the spaceship he’d designed in second grade and immediately drawn in pencil on the fresh paint. Over the whole thing, there is a visible coating of dust because his dad never offered to help clean it and Teo wouldn’t do it himself._ _ _ _

____Teo pushes the door open._ _ _ _

____His room is messy, so sue him, there are more blankets at the foot of his bed than on it, more clothes piled on the closet floor than in the closet, more half-assed homework strewn on the desk than in his backpack. There is a corkboard in the wall-space between his bed and his scratched-up desk, but there's nothing tacked on it. The only light comes from a lamp with a frayed cord and the window, covered with torn blinds. The blinds are moving, but there is no breeze. Teo decides not to point that out._ _ _ _

____“The blinds are moving,” Sokka points out. Well, now he’s being observant._ _ _ _

____“That’s Bartholemew.” Teo scoops his backpack up and digs through the front pocket, (in which there is a broken pencil, a Shrek-themed tape measure, and a twinkie.)“Get your phone if you want to film.”_ _ _ _

____Teo waves the twinkie in the bars of sunlight from the window. The blinds shudder as a weight is lifted from them, then the bed gains two bouncing divots, the ceiling fan spins from the child’s head being smacked on it, and the twinkie is ripped from Teo’s hand, the wrapper falling peacefully to the floor. “Could you pick that up, Sokka?”_ _ _ _

____“Why me, I’m the cameraman,” Sokka complains, but takes the wrapper anyway. He returns to center his camera just as the floating twinkie disappears, presumably in one bite._ _ _ _

____“Thanks for your performance, Bartholomew,” Teo says to empty air. Bartholomew is sitting on the ceiling fan, shown by the awkward tilt of the thing, and is deeply suspicious of the yellow-coated boy pointing the metal witch-rectangle at him._ _ _ _

____“So,” Sokka says after pausing his recording, “You said there was a third one?”_ _ _ _

____“Wolfgang,” Teo confirms. “The French, or maybe Scottish, opium catboy who threw scalpel-scissors at me.”_ _ _ _

____“Let me guess,” Sokka sighs, “he lives in the basement.”_ _ _ _

____“The science cave.” Teo goes through the sentence in his mind and can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t quite correct. He taps on the side of his wheelchair, thinking, and then slaps it. “The laboratory!”_ _ _ _

____“I like 'science cave' better. Where is it?”_ _ _ _

____Across from Teo’s room, there is his parents’-- his dad’s room. Across from his dad’s room is the laboratory. The hallway has a couple more angles, possibly dimensions, than Teo quite understands, but his mom was the architect, and he can't exactly ask her about it. “This way.”_ _ _ _

____The laboratory door is locked, with a key code. The code used to be his mom’s birthday. Now it's his. Teo punches it in and the door slides open soundlessly, conditioned-cold air tumbling out._ _ _ _

____Sokka jumps as the air seeps into his crocs. “Was that him?”_ _ _ _

____“Nah, the lab has to be colder. For science reasons.” The air is colder, the lights brighter, the tables metal and gleaming. One wall is taken over by shelves and freezers shoved every-which-way. In teal sharpie, one of the freezers is labeled “The eye fridge, do not open for snacks!” Teo commends himself for his forethought in the warning._ _ _ _

____“The eye fridge,” Sokka reads, squinting. “Is it… full of eyes?”_ _ _ _

____“Sokka.” Teo levels his gaze at his (robotics) second-in-command. “Make a deduction.”_ _ _ _

____“I think I’m not going to open it.” Sokka takes a step back, and another, keeping a hand between him and the eye fridge._ _ _ _

____Teo nods. “Right choice.” He slides his hand over the nearest metal table, and freezes when he feels the sharp edge of something metal. “Found the scalpel-scissors.” He picks them up by the worryingly-thin plastic handles. They're made from two classic x-acto blade scalpels, fastened into an x with a nut and bolt. Teo runs his fingers over the little scar through his eyebrow, which he’d gotten from these very scissors. _Thanks,Wolfgang. _____ _ _

______Sokka stops his retreat from the eye-fridge to peer at the scalpel-scissors. “Dude, those sure are scalpel-scissors.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Yep.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“What are they even for?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Ghosts to throw at my face when I call them names.” When Wolfgang got him, Teo had cleaned and bandaged the cut all by himself, without fainting even a little, which he thought was pretty cool, given he was only thirteen at the time._ _ _ _ _ _

______“But why were they made?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Spite?” Teo shrugged. His dad made a lot of inexplicable inventions, and the scalpel-scissors were really low on the list. To be fair, he also made a helicopter, so Teo wasn’t complaining._ _ _ _ _ _

______Sokka figured that was the best answer he was gonna get, so he started looking through the stuff in the lab. There was, gleefully, an actual boiling beaker of green liquid, and he really wanted to chug it._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Don’t chug it,” Teo says._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sokka lies._ _ _ _ _ _

______Teo waves the scalpel-scissors above his head. “Hey, Nyan, come get us!” He orders Sokka “Film!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sokka fumbles out his phone and hits record._ _ _ _ _ _

______Teo wheels a little bit forward and a little bit back, one handed, like he’s doing a dance. “Catra! Serafina! French Garfield! Come out, pspsps!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Coming distinctly from above the eye fridge is a hiss. It could be passed off as a Laboratory Noise, but Sokka knows better. He points the camera at it. “Hey, Wolfgang, Janice isn’t gonna notice you,” he taunts. That’s no failing of Walfgang’s, to be fair, as Janice is a lesbian and also dead, but Wolfgang doesn’t know that._ _ _ _ _ _

______The scalpel-scissors are twisted out of Teo’s hand, and he gasps, “Holy John Mitochondria, I just remembered we’re fucking stupid!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“So true, bestie!” Sokka squeaks, and continues filming with one hand while ominous piano music begins playing, his heart beating painfully fast. He parkours over the tables to Teo. “Want me to--”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Yeah.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Sokka wrenches Teo’s wheelchair around and shoves him, almost too hard, out of the lab, scalpel-scissors flying towards the space where he was just sitting. Sokka flinches and ducks, and the scalpel-scissors rise again. “Sorry, Wolfgang,” Sokka yells before crossing himself (he’s not even Christian, where did that come from?) and slamming the door shut._ _ _ _ _ _

______Teo punches in the “extra-locked” code, which puts a Faraday cage over the door, so not even noncorporeal beings can escape. _That _code is his mom’s birthday.___ _ _ _ _ _

________“Oh, man,” Sokka says, panting with his back to the wall. He pauses the recording. “How-- and why-- are we so dumb?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“It _was _funny, though. Now, I believe we’re out of mustard.”___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________The recordings go viral._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> to quote the famous Hella1975 and the classic Scooby-Doo, aha... jinkies. 
> 
> Also I know this isn't technically a drabble based on word count but I wrote it all in one day so that's what I'll call it
> 
> Also if you're curious the John they keep praising is John Mulaney because they're Edgy Modern Teens and Don't Fear God.
> 
> Also you should read my fic They Who Know 9,999 Things because it's good and I update it every Friday


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